What was hot on the web this week? Get up to speed on the latest trends, news and services with some of our favorite new stories.
Dogsly: Instagram for Your Furry Friends
Dogsly is a new photo-sharing app, much like Instagram, but exclusively for puppy pictures. Available only for the iPhone, Dogsly lets you share photos, see a stream of the entire community and share them with your friends on Twitter.
Fun features include a retweet option as well as photo editing tools powered by Aviary. I don’t have a dog of my own, but I’ll have a lot of fun with this app.
Read more here.
Facebook Files for IPO
Facebook took its first steps in becoming a publicly traded company when it filed for an IPO Wednesday, seeking to raise $5 billion. It’s on track to becoming the largest Internet IPO—larger than Google’s in 2004.
However, many close to the company say that Facebook is aiming for a far greater offering that could value it as high as $75 billion to $100 billion. If that’s the case, Facebook would be much bigger than many longer-established American companies, including Kraft Foods, Goldman Sachs and Ford Motor.
Read more here.
YouTube May Introduce Subscription Service
At the D:Dive Into Media conference, YouTube CEO Salar Kamangar said his company could potentially create a service that could enable content providers to create their own subscription-based video offerings on the YouTube platform.
Kamangar estimated that about 20 percent of all video revenues — both online and off — come from sales or rentals, with 40 percent coming from subscriptions and the final 40 percent coming from advertising. He thinks the amount of ad sales will grow as a percentage compared to some of the other business models.
Read more here.
President Obama Hangs Out on Google+
President Obama held the first all-digital White House interview on Monday, making his debut on a Google+ Hangout. Over 227,000 viewers submitted questions, but only five lucky winners were selected to chat with the President face-to-face (kind of).
The forum provided a unique opportunity to harness available technology to make politics and our political leaders more personal.
Read more here.
